November 2010

Boost Mobile, which works on the no-contract wireless industry side of the street, unveiled its latest campaign, featuring a 20-foot tall giant who, in the words of company officials, “is having a rough time dealing with his stature.”

It’s in the service of promoting Boost Mobile $50 Monthly Unlimited with Shrinkage. The storyline is that while this can't shrink all of the challenges associated with being a giant in a normal sized world, “it can shrink the monthly payments on a no-contract unlimited plan available on the NationwideSprint Network with on-time payments.”

And who better to convey that message than a 20-foot giant?

"Like our Giant, we've all wished we could shrink something, especially cell phone payments," said Caralene Robinson, director-Brand and Marketing communications, Boost Mobile. "With Boost's Shrinkage plan the longer you stay, the less you pay. Our customers, big or small, can watch their monthly payment shrink from $50 to as low as $35/month by simply making 18 on-time payments."

Nuance Communications announced that their technology now powers the voice search capabilities on the new Price Check IVR app by Amazon, for iPhone.

Using the same core voice technology found in the Dragon Dictation and Dragon Search apps “downloaded by millions of mobile consumers worldwide,” Nuance officials say, “Price Check by Amazon lets users simply speak the name of any product when they are shopping to receive instant prices for that item onAmazon.com.”

Customers can also use the app to scan a barcode, snap a picture or type a product name to return product matches and pricing from Amazon.com and its other online merchants.

"Price Check by Amazon demonstrates the power and efficiency that Nuance's voice technology brings to the mobile shopping experience," said Michael Thompson, senior vice president and general manager of Nuance Mobile, in a press release.

You’re a voice mobile virtual network operator. As such, do you find your marketing campaigns delivering customers who always remember your Carrier Access Code (Prefix)? Do your customers always use your Carrier Access Code to make International long distance calls? Is your cost of customer acquisition and retention something to be proud of?

If not, well, you have a friend: “We understand that as a MVNO, it's always a challenge to ensure that your target audience remembers your Carrier Access Code and that they prefix the same before their destination number while making long distance calls,” said officials of Reve Systems.

In fact, that’s why the vendor introduced iTel MVNO Smart, a mobile application specially designed for end users of MVNO service providers.

A recent examination of the BPM used for the Carphone Warehouse revealed some interesting findings.

“The Carphone Warehouse has already seen early benefits from its BPM implementations,” say official of Macehiter Ward-Dutton, who conducted the study. “Processes linking CRM and billing functionality are now in place and are able to be changed much more quickly than would have been the case using ‘traditional’ integration methods. In another project, a telecoms service activation process has been implemented centrally and made available to retail operations across Europe, bringing major time-to-market benefits for new products.”

The company’s fast growth, combined with the way it’s grown -- “blending organic growth with a very proactive approach to acquisition of businesses in order to enter new markets and territories” -- means it has a base of complicated applications. This is a big IT challenge, given all the legacy demands.

As a result, Carphone Warehouse decided to implement not just a new billing system, but a new CRM system as well.

We love this headset manufacturer’s slogan: “It pays in the end to buy the best in the beginning.” Indeed.

That’s courtesy of the Freemate headset brand, solely imported by Phonatics to South Africa. Phonatics officials said, “we sell and support this brand in the South African market. This is definitely the best alternative headset brand in South Africa, if you compare pricing and quality to other well known brands.”

The headset will be available in January 2011.

Phonatics, a South African supplier of call center equipment and headsets, launched its first 2.4MHZ wireless headset, the Freemate DW770 series headset. Company officials described it as a dual-function wireless headset “for both VOIP and traditional telephony, providing all the benefits of hands-free mobility in a lightweight, ergonomic and future-proof design.”

San Francisco-based Mansa Systems officials are saying their company is “the only boutique IT consulting services company among Salesforce.com consulting partners that focuses on small, mid and enterprise markets by having onshore, offshore and nearshore centers for North America customers.” The near and off-shore locations are in Costa Rica and China.

Their product is an enterprise application services provider with main focus and proficiency in Software-as-a-Service applications implementation, cloud application development, cloud telephony development, data management, business intelligence and mobile application development. The company provides Salesforce implementation, customization and integration services and force.com application development services.

Mansa was founded in 2006 by Siva Devaki and Arti Devaki, and has focused on systems integration for small to midsized businesses since then. According to Devaki, CEO of Mansa, “It didn’t make sense to butt heads with the Big Five, so we targeted the SMB area where there was less competition."

A company dealing with sensitive information in their call center has received customized workstations, featuring a locking chase system that physically secures customer service representative computers from access by agents.

Interior Concepts, a manufacturer of call center furniture, has announced that as part of a recent contract it was awarded in Michigan, it installed customized workstations featuring a locking chase system that greatly heightens security for the information contained in them.

Company officials said that this makes it difficult for anyone other than IT to access the computers. This may be especially important for call centers with healthcare clients and their HIPAA regulations, or for call centers that deal with especially sensitive information.

The contract, for a Texas-based provider of inbound and outbound customer interaction products, called for a new 37,000 square-foot facility in Michigan.

The Indian BPO and the call center sector has been instrumental in India’s economic growth, according to research recently conducted by IQPC, which found that it was responsible for adding five million jobs and $15 billion in revenue.

“India’s diversity, flexibility, strategic location, educated workforce and technical expertise have attracted global players to outsource their support and customer service operations to the country, despite stiff competition from countries like the Philippines,” the research found.

The International Quality and Productivity Center provides practical conferences, large-scale events, topical seminars and in-house training programs, aimed at “keeping business executives up-to-date with industry trends, technological developments and the regulatory landscape,” company officials say. IQPC produces more than 1,800 events annually around the world, and continues to grow.

To maintain this position, which the research characterizes as a global leader in the call center industry, and to retain existing client bases, “strengthening infrastructure and using the latest technologies are top priorites for Indian call centers,” the study found.

Want to know how to select the right furniture for your call center? Interior Concepts has six things to keep in mind:

Look for a furniture company that has experience working with contact centers. Seek a partnership with a company that will allow you to work with the same group of people regardless of your center’s location.

Schwab Advisor Services used theI MPACT 2010 stage to anoint two vendors for Schwab Intelligent Integration that surprised some people and a third that many expected.”

According to RIABiz, the RIA custodian “picked Microsoft CRM and SalesForce – two brand names not readily associated with financial advisors — in addition to Junxure, a widely used CRM software that is already tied closely to Schwab.”

The industry journal cited executives who said the integrated platform would likely be launched by this time next year.

“It was somewhat surprising … because industry surveys don’t indicate that Microsoft and Salesforce are that high up on people’s list,” RIABiz quoted Joel Bruckenstein, a technology consultant who produces Technology Tools for Today, as saying.

RIABiz speculated that Schwab could be placing its emphasis on “satisfying the biggest, fastest-growing RIAs who need software built foremost for scaleability.”

According to SMB technology advisor Brent Leary, a new study has found that small businesses “are struggling with marketing and innovation, which is an eye-opener in an age in which "social" marketing and innovation have gained traction.”

According to the June installment of the “Network Solutions /University of Maryland State of Small Business Report,” the overall health of small business “has declined over the past six months. Marketing and innovation -- the second most important category used in measuring overall competitiveness (only behind access to capital) -- appears to be the main culprit, as it experienced the largest drop in performance.”

The reason why they’re struggling might surprise you. According to Leary, “more and more, businesses are are turning to social tools and strategies to communicate more with customers. In fact the study shows three-quarters of businesses surveyed look to social media to raise awareness of their business, compared to only 56 percent just last year.”

Knowledge management products vendor Consona recently highlighted the importance of making knowledge the center of attention for your customers.

Using the experience of their client VMware as an example, Consona recommends companies have “knowledge champions” that take ownership of the knowledge base and the user experience to maintain standards, ensure accuracy and availability, and generally ensure that the system is providing real value to users – both tech support and end-user customers.

One of the most intriguing aspects of VMware’s customer support structure, Consona officials say, is that their knowledge champions “are actual tech support representatives,” brought into the champion position on six month rotations.

"Marketing and sales work closely together to determine the best processes and methods for lead follow-up to drive additional sales," said Gregg Pinsky, SVP/GM of Online Operations at IDG Enterprise. "Technology is making this process easier. LeadAccel will provide the knowledge needed to determine the next stages in communication or sales engagement to accelerate the purchase process."

Available January 2011, company officials said, LeadAccel “will provide insight in topic specific engagement of customers and prospects, and nurture them through the purchase process based on interests.”

LeadAccel includes “three lead-focused services to assist marketers in understanding how their leads are engaging with their campaigns and educational assets,” company officials said.

Fair Trade USA, a third-party certifier of Fair Trade products in the United States, was presented with an Innovator Award in the Applying CRM To Manage Your Mission category for their use of both Salesforce and Convio Common Ground.

"As an organization, we are pleased to have won this award because it acknowledges the commitment we made to roll out Salesforce and Common Ground to every corner of our organization," explained James Bullard, director of IT and Administration at Fair Trade USA.

The citation noted their accomplishment in creating something that “enables them to track information about relationships, business partners, corporations, grants and giving.”

All award winners were recognized at a ceremony at Convio's Client Summit, the company's annual user conference where more than 800 nonprofit clients, partners and industry thought leaders gather as a community to share common experiences and effective strategies for nonprofits.

In order to improve security and data access along with new reporting and integration goals, Oracle officials said, eSilicon Corporation, an independent semiconductor Value Chain Producer (VCP), recently implemented Oracle CRM On Demand.

"Our deployment of Oracle CRM On Demand already delivers improved security and opportunity management, which we initially identified as the key goals to achieve," said Gino Skulick, eSilicon's VP Worldwide Sales, adding that the company looks forward to tightening the integration with other applications.

“The core of eSilicon's Oracle CRM On Demand deployment is focused on a smarter use of security and opportunity management to increase efficiencies within teams and knowledge across the organization,” Oracle officials said, adding that eSilicon transferred all data from their former CRM application to Oracle CRM On Demand for the first phase, including “a tightening of security and a seamless transition of similar forms.”

Recently, TMC had the news that eSilicon announced the availability of production-proven eFlex content-addressable memory (CAM) cores and eFlexCAM compilers, developed to support applications such as network switches, routers, gateways, firewalls and web servers.

High demand from organizations of all sizes for Oracle's enterprise-class Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Applications has led to an increase in partner-created Oracle Accelerate tools for Oracle CRM On Demand, Oracle officials reported.

Since the first Oracle Accelerate tool for Oracle CRM On Demand debuted in September 2009, 23 Oracle PartnerNetwork Partners have created 31 Oracle CRM On Demand products for midsize customers across industry verticals, company officials said.

Oracle CRM On Demand is a subscription-based CRM for sales, service, marketing and contact-center operations that enables companies to streamline mission-critical business processes.

Bandwidth.com, a provider of Internet and VoIP services, outgrew its homegrown CRM system -- but its partners required controlled access to the Bandwidth.com CRM, This meant they needed a system with enough security but still easily accessible over the Internet.

The company’s specialized pricing engine, a component of the sales process, needed “sophisticated, bidirectional integration with the new CRM,” company officials said, adding that because Bandwidth.com is a reseller of communications services providing first-line customer support, “the efficiency of the company's service teams was critical to profitable operations.”

So after looking at their integration, customization, and functional requirements, Bandwidth.com selected Salesforce CRM. Using Salesforce CRM Service, Bandwidth.com officials say, they “coordinate and manage customer service and support across the numerous telecommunications parties involved in delivering service to customers.”

Force.com enabled integration between Bandwidth.com's proprietary pricing engine and Salesforce CRM, according to Bandwidth.com officials, adding that the company used Salesforce.com's customization tools to help track inventory, business initiatives, and referrals.

Contact Solutions, a vendor of on-demand contact automation products including IVR, email/text messaging and Web transactions for business and government, has doubled its call volume to 2 billion over the past 18 months.

Company officials say this is “a strong indicator of not only strength during the recession,” but also that the vendor offers “world-class service” that allows its customers to provide superior customer service to the end user.

The company began offering IVR services to companies across the United States in 2002. They reached the 1 billion call mark in 2009 and doubled that amount in less than 18 months, according to Paul Logan, Contact Solutions CEO.

"This achievement is about much more than the number of calls," Logan said. "We have helped all of our customers get through rough economic times by helping them reduce operating costs through increased usage of self-service to automate their customers' inquiries and other activities.”

The good folks at Soffront ask “How many steps does it take to create an ad hoc report in your CRM software?”

They helpfully supply the answer: “Nine. That’s how many steps it takes to create an ad hoc report in Microsoft Dynamics CRM.” And then they go screen by screen showing in detail that yes, by golly, it really does take nine steps to create an ad hoc report in Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

“Is there such a thing as express Ad Hoc reporting?” they ask, and you knew they had an answer, that’s a rhetorical question if you’ve ever heard it: “There is with Soffront CRM software.

A CRM Webinar entitled “Keys to Successful Social CRM Programs” took place Oct. 20 and the archived version can still be accessed. The Webinar features Paul Greenberg, who certainly needs no introduction to the CRM industry, as he’s one of the top CRM consultants working today.

“Your customers are now empowered with more choices than ever before, and can talk about you where they want, when they want, and in places you can’t control, ultimately affecting you without your permission,” Webinar officials said. “Customer behavior has changed, and thus, so must you.”

To support your relationships with 21st century customers, the Webinar’s officials contend, it’s important to develop responsive Social CRM programs that support these new dynamics. Greenberg, author of CRM at the Speed of Light, will break down the basics when it comes to crafting successful Social CRM programs.

Greenberg’s best-selling CRM at the Speed of Light, Fourth Edition: Social CRM 2.0 Strategies, Tools and Techniques for Engaging Your Customers, is as close as CRM has to a standard textbook.

inContact, a vendor of hosted contact center software and contact center agent optimization tools, has announced that a provider of positioning technology, such as GPS, optical and laser technologies, has selected the inContact call routing to power their service and support call centers across 16 global offices.

The company noted it will initially move approximately 175 agents onto the inContact platform, according to inContact officials, and over time “plans to scale to more than 250 agents.”

Prior to switching to inContact, this $4 billion company “was using another provider's offering in its call centers, but frequent software outages and the inability to support the customer's distributed global infrastructure dictated the need for change,” inContact officials say, adding that the company “has historically made a number of acquisitions per year, and needed a platform that could quickly and seamlessly provide flexible support for their ever-changing and expanding corporate service infrastructure.”

NetSuite, a provider of cloud-based ERP software offerings, has launched a cloud-based ERP suite for the Philippine market, OneWorld PH.

The new OneWorld PH, NetSuite officials say, is “a localized version of OneWorld, an on-demand system to deliver real-time global business management and financial consolidation to mid-sized companies with multinational and multi-subsidiary operations.”

The company said that the new OneWorld PH has been localized for the accounting rules, usage conventions, statutory and regulatory requirements of the Philippine market, “including tax reporting requirements mandated by the Bureau of Internal Revenue.”

The OneWorld PH, according to a description by NetSuite officials, “facilitates Philippine businesses to manage their domestic and global businesses in the cloud, whether they are locally headquartered or a division of a larger, multi-national enterprise.”

Large business-to-consumer (B2C) organizations are “shifting the focus of their call centers to become revenue generators rather than simply answering customer queries or executing transaction requests,” according to researchf indings from Portrait Software, a provider of customer interaction optimization software and now a part of Pitney Bowes Business Insight.

"Organizations are realizing that traditional, outbound marketing, particularly via the telephone, offers diminishing returns for the business," says Luke McKeever, CEO, Portrait Software. "As such, the future of the customer relationship resides in sustained, informed and tailored customer service and the call center is a critical factor in this process.

Conducted by Loudhouse Research, the study surveyed strategic decision-makers at UK and US in-house call centers and found that “69 percent of large B2C organizations view their call centers as business-critical revenue generators.”

To meet this demand for call centers to deliver revenues, study officials say, 60 percent of respondents cited “the need for better integration of inter-departmental customer data” as a key focus for the next 12 months. In particular, “the need to integrate call center data with online customer service” was seen as a primary focus for the next 12 months, with 54 percent of decision makers citing this as a key challenge for the year ahead.

Sitel, a global business process outsourcing provider, and SATMAP, which sells technology for matching customers to call center agents, have announced a partnership to offer clients “optimal call center routing based on customer and agent characteristics,” according to Sitel officials.

This collaboration is a part of Sitel’s investment in new call center technologies, “building on the company’s call center products to drive a better customer experience at a lower cost,” company officials say.

Working with neural networks and artificial intelligence technology used by the CIA and NSA, Sitel officials say, SATMAP pairs call center agents with customers through a list of more than 100 demographic, psychographic and geographic variables -- “Everything from gender and age to location and education are analyzed in billions of combinations to optimally connect calls with specific agents who are most likely to succeed with a specific customer.”

Toronto-based Redknee, which sells billing and charging software for communications service providers, announced the launch of its customer experience management offering with KPN Spain.

Following the launch of Redknee's intelligent application development tool for Interactive Voice Response, Spain's largest MVNO experienced “an immediate return on its investment due to the reduced volume of calls to its customer support center,” according to Redknee officials, “and improved the subscriber experience for its customers.”

KPN Spain is part of the KPN group, which serves more than 42 million customers combined.

KPN Spain selected Redknee's customer experience management tool as its self-care front-office service to deliver “an improved user experience to its customers,” Redknee officials said, adding that “the new generation of application and development tools for IVRs is bringing service providers greater agility, flexibility, usability and quality through automated customer care.”

Recent consumer research from international research organization YouGov and Acision, a vendor in the mobile data field, finds that, despite the rising popularity of mobile broadband, 74 percent had experienced QoE issues.

The Quality of Experience challenges faced by U.S. carriers with the delivery of mobile broadband services extend to smartphones, laptops and other mobile handsets.

Depressingly this problem isn’t getting any better, either: YouGov officials said this new research “echoes findings from a similar YouGov/Acision survey conducted in the U.K. earlier this summer.”

Other highlights from the research:

Consumers express support for increased fairness. When those surveyed were made aware of the issues surrounding the fair distribution of bandwidth, over half of consumers responded positively to an active approach to fairness aimed at distributing bandwidth between as many people as possible to ease congestion to benefit all users (63 percent).

The overall number of channel partners -- VARs, SIs, ISVs, what have you -- offering cloud services to U.S. small and medium businesses has grown enormously since 2008, according to AMI-Partners' 2010 US SMB Channel Partner Report, fueled in part by the prevailing economic conditions and new cloud solutions and technologies.

With strong adoption by these SMBs, Remote Managed IT Services are “growing rapidly and becoming more structured in the U.S.,” according to the report’s officials, who add that according to new research by New York-based AMI-Partners, “there are more products available for U.S. SMBs and more methods for delivering these tools in an efficient manner for channel partners.”

The research finds that overall, “current conditions are very promising for partners to embrace the cloud, cautioning that however, “the channel partners are hampered in their transition to cloud-based services by their small scale and accompanying legacy cost structures and business models,” according to Avinash Arun, Channel Partner Research Manager at AMI. These factors have resulted in somewhat higher costs for end-users.

According to Benjamin Stone, a lawyer of the Seattle office of law firm Cozen O'Connor, who handles Telephone Consumer Protection Act class actions nationwide, Simon & Schuster recently agreed to pay up to $10 million to settle a putative class action by consumers who allegedly received text messages promoting a new Stephen King novel.

“Thus, if your company uses any type of dialing hardware or software, or uses vendors that do,” Stone writes, “you should be aware of the provisions of the TCPA and strategies to prevent litigation.”

Stone provides a good summary of the key points of TCPA you should be aware of if you’re using this technology.

Does it pay to buy IP Transit instead of investing in your own international IP network? TeliaSonera thinks it does.

For one thing, TeliaSonera officials say, large-scale peering drives excessive costs. “While capacity prices have been stable or decreasing in most important markets, router prices have increased – making capital expenditure the dominating risk factor. The more peers, the more related equipment required, and the higher the capital expenditure.”

And if that’s not enough, there are the increased network management costs.

Mobile carriers are currently developing next generation of networks to handle the huge increase in mobile traffic. Long Term Evolution, which you might have heard referred to as 4G, will most likely be the next-generation technology for both voice and data wireless transmission.

With the exception of the air interface, LTE is an all-IP network – taking advantage of and converging with IP network technology. The reason for the optimism is that LTE has some impressive capabilities:

It has support for multiple-input, multiple-output antenna technology, including 2x2 and 4x4 configurations. It also features 300 Mbps downlink and 150 Mbps uplink bandwidth when using 4x4 MIMO, with latencies of less than 5 ms.

The mobile market is growing, worth something in the neighborhood of $500 billion in 2010. The strongest growth is posted by data services such as mVoIP, both on fixed and mobile networks, according to a new study, “The Mobile VoIP Market Report 2010-2015.”

Among other findings, the report says sales of Internet connections and data services on fixed networks will grow in 2010 by 7 percent, to around $250 billion. Mobile data services -- such as mVoIP -- “are posting even stronger growth” as well.

The report “outlines how the mobile VoIP market will evolve further during the next five years, ensuring that you are in the know when it comes to important decisions within the mVoIP industry,” company officials say.

And yes, of course there’s the obligatory social media angle: “The online social networks such as Facebook and Myspace have integrated mVoIP services to offer opportunities for development of third-party applications and software, as well as multimedia content and advertising. Facebook users for example currently send one billion IMs per day.”

Voxeo, a vendor of Unlocked Communications, and Collab, a European-based provider of OneContact, a contact center tool for hosted contact center providers, outsourcers and enterprise contact centers, have announced Collab has chosen Voxeo’s technology to deliver its contact center software.

“We selected Voxeo as the technology of our choice since it is the best, fully SIP-based IVR platform for VoiceXML and CCXML in the market, with very strong hosting capabilities,” explains Carlos Pedro Vasconcelos, Marketing & Business Development Manager at Collab.